Bonds of Discord: Religious Meaning-Making in Online Mormon Interpretive Communities

• In Event: 262 - Section on Sociology of Religion Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 06. Mormons' Views of Race and Sex

Abstract

In this paper I ask how meaning-making functions as a shared religious activity online. To this end, I examine a sample of Mormon blog posts which all address the excommunication of a highly-visible Mormon feminist activist. The controversy and wide reach of the excommunication provides a good case for studying the variation among and interrelatedness between these religious bloggers. The central aim of the paper is to problematize past research on online religious meaning-making which tends to focus narrowly on the relation between religious participants and religious authorities. Here instead, I emphasize the interrelations between religious participants that mediate their relation to the central religious authority. I show that divergent interpretive communities can exist within a single religious tradition, and the interpretations that these communities create are relationally evoked and constituted by the interpretations of their rivals. Thus, I argue that religious meaning-making online emerges as a possibility from commitment to a shared religious tradition, yet relies on competing interpretive communities for its actual form. I conclude by speculating what these findings might mean for the future of religiosity in an increasingly connected world.

Author

• Michael Lee Wood, University of Notre Dame